jane gardner

Welcome. Welcome. It's jane again, doing another show. And um this time we're going to be talking about the audio acoustics in your room. I know I kind of skipped over this and went onto microphones, but we're going to say, we're going to talk about padding and acoustic panels.

So we're also going to have another episode where we talk about audacity, the free software you can use to record your voice and but you can also use audacity um to basically um make a recording of you speaking and then that listening to the recording and seeing what kind of sounds you sound you hear other than your voice that you don't want to hear. Because audacity has a few things in there where it can cancel out those sounds and and take them out.

But we're going to talk today about how to try and take some of those problems in your sound out before you actually record. So today, um you've either realized that you have an echo or maybe your audio is perfect. You don't have to do any of this. So even better. But if not, um and you have something noisy that, you know, you can't get rid of, for example, your computer, but you could put it into an acoustical box, like a box, um with acoustical panels on it, so it absorbs sound and it doesn't come out or something like that.

But you can probably find something fairly reasonable to do this, but you cannot easily edit bad audios noise in post production. I mean, you can but you know why why why try and get it, you know, make it better the first time. So we're gonna talk about um a couple of things um you may have already heard about if you do any podcasting, audio foam panels and the other one is called a bass trap, which probably we've you've not heard of and I'll show you a picture of because it's mostly used in musical music studios and I'm going to sneeze.

So excuse me while I sneeze. So what are base panels? Bass traps and phone panels? Well, essentially to do one thing, which is to absorb echo and clean up your reverb in your recording studio. But although they may look the same, they're actually a bit different and they serve different purposes.

So the smaller the room is, the more padding you will need in order to absorb sound because of the echo when you speak your voice and your audio just bounces all over on the walls and comes back to you if it's too small. So we've probably going to have to put up some acoustical panel to reduce the echo for example.

So bass traps are used to filter out or remove the low frequencies or the bass frequencies. Now it really depends on what you're building your home studio for. Um if you're going to record music for example, um traps, it will help you because they will help you to control the bass frequencies when recording.

Um but also there are bass frequencies in your voice. But generally speaking for bass traps, you would find a lot in recording studios, music recording studios, if you're doing podcasts or videos like this, then you may not need based traps, but you definitely need foam panels. So phone panels are for mid to high frequencies and bass traps and foam panels can work together or you can use just either one, but mostly it's used together and if you don't need it all well even better, but if you're not in a recording studio or using musical instruments, you can skip the bass traps and you can just focus on getting phone panels.

So we're gonna show you some of the what they look like, just so when you're looking in the catalog, you can figure that out. So we're looking at um having a little bit of a cold, but we're looking at the acoustics for your studio. And for example, these are foam panels that you can get there are triangular in in cross section and so they absorb sounds since their phone. And um here's a picture of a bass trap over on the left in the corner of the room and those are foam panels adhering to the wall.

So bass traps. Um they're basically is is in the corners of the room, is where your rules meet each other and there triangular. And so of course they absorb more sound because they're thicker in the middle. And these angles are the ones that reflect the most amount of audio.

And it's responsible for serious audio problems sometimes in in the corner of the room. So it's always good to put some acoustic panels there. And those are the base, it's triangular. Ones are the base type, which you probably don't need.

Um so if you were to get the bass drops, they'll fit in nicely here and then 90° angle on the wall, triangular. Um but you don't really need bass traps if you think your audio is pretty good when you do your test and you're not recording music. So in this section, you can position um your acoustical panel, phone panel in the corner to absorb any sound that might be echoing off in the corner because the it's not as critical for podcasting and doing videos.

It's basically you can curve it and attach it and it'll act in a same way, very cost efficient way to do it. Um so the next one you want of course to cover is your hard surfaces, for example, the door in your studio. So you can also put um phone panels around the door handle, cut it. That's what's nice about foam.

And because hard surfaces also tend to reflect audio, make audio bounce. And that creates an echo. So you can basically this is uh what acoustical panel looks like. It's a triangular in nature. You can get it of course on amazon. And so you can use it um you've got to use more than one, of course, but you don't know how many until you actually try it out.

So you might want to just start with a few. Um and then try and see what it does to absorb your sound and then if it's working, that's great. If it doesn't work well, you just don't use it. Um, so most importantly, it comes in two different colors.

So you can have some fun and arrange your foam panels anyway, you want and it makes your studio look cool. So the recommended coverage area is 48 square feet for your studio. And this is just a rule of thumb, it really depends how big your studio is, but you should have about 48 square feet of it on one wall.

And then, so you can always get packages of 12 square feet four packages of that, for example. Or you could get 12 square feet, which is 12 panels and then times 12. Now that being said, you don't have to go and get 48 square feet of adult ones because as I mentioned before, having too much of this panel actually can affect your audience in ways that you don't really want it to. So you can do more harm and good.

So start with your 12 square feet and you can scale up by adding another 24 or another 12, two different areas in your home studio or office studio until you get the right balance and removed all the acoustical problems like echo and buzz from your studio. So obviously if you have a perfect um studio and there's no problems with sound after you do a test.

And I would definitely use audacity because it has a um, it has a noise um leveling I think, and it also has a noise removal. And so when you take out the, your actual voice, you can, you can see the little um noise being made of ambient noise before we actually speak and what, and we'll talk about that later.

Um because it's, it's really good to record it and then listen to it um very quietly in your headphones to see if you're happy with the sound of your voice. And also, of course, you're happy that there isn't too much buzz or noise and you don't have to clean it up.

Well, if you want to clean it up then it would be worth getting some foam panels for your home studio to set up and I might order some soon just to try it out. Maybe we'll see. But the difference is if I put some foam panel panel up, if I remove any of the noise, although my basically I found that the microphone having a good microphone, like the blue yeti or the audio technica is great for um, sound that you really don't need to worry too much about not sending natural.

Um so that's, that's it for today. I'm gonna make a note to um do one on audacity, how to install it maybe, and then show you the possibilities of using audacity for your home studio as well. As of course, later on you will use other software, like video editor, but this is a good start.

Um so we've gone through most of the sound um possibilities for your studio and now I think we've done a couple of microphone types and I think we should probably get onto lighting. That's pretty important. And so my lighting right now is pretty cool, uh pretty white. And so I have to adjust that make my face warmer.

But that will be for next time I'll show you that you have a lot of control inside your web cam that you buy as to changing the colors of your video. Thank you for listening. This is jane gardner.